If you are anything like me you have a huge pile of papers, photographs, documents and just plain "things" sitting around, all of them connected in some way to your genealogy. I’ve been writing about organizing, and I am well on my way to having everything in my collection set up so I can find it without too much effort. My filing cabinets are getting full and the piles of paper are getting smaller. On top of that, the names, dates, places and other facts about my family are mostly keyed into my family history program. I feel a lot better now about my genealogy than I did even a few months ago.

There is still a lot of work to do, though. For example, even though I have started, I still have thousands of photographs to go through. I need to label those that I can, and at least make a note of what part of the family the photo belongs to for those I can’t identify. Along with more than 10,000 slides I took when I lived overseas there are maybe 5,000 more I took here, and then there are thousands of photographs, too. Those are just the ones that I personally have taken.

Many of the slides are identified and labeled, but the photos are far from done. Then there are the boxes and boxes of photos of my family from the past. So far I have been able to keep them separated into my mom’s side and my dad’s side, and I have labeled some. Fortunately, some were labeled by my mom before Alzheimer’s took her memories.

Not only do I have our photos, but I’ve inherited those taken by my father and my grandparents, a few aunts and uncles, and ... you get the picture. It is an almost impossible task, but it needs to be done.

Among the piles of paper I have also a collection of interview sheets from family members. I have two forms I use when interviewing (I’ll explain them in detail in another article). One is used when I am working with an individual, and it is very basic. It records names, dates and places, with a number for each person mentioned in the interview (that way I can keep track of relationships by using the numbers). For instance, I put the person I am interviewing as number one on the chart. If that person was married at some point I put the spouse as number two. If there were children I list them, and use the parents’ numbers as reference to show that they were the parents. And so it goes. If there is more information about someone that I want to record I can use the same number on the back of the sheet for that added information, or use a page in my notebook to write it all down.

Page 2 of 2 - A while back, though, I noticed something was missing in all of this. I had to look into various folders to get the contact information for my informants if I needed to ask more questions, or wanted to schedule a follow-up interview. Now I have a notebook that I keep in a specific spot on one of my book shelves.

This notebook isn’t complete because I didn’t start it years ago, but I hope to have it complete from now on. It has a sheet for each contact person and that page has his or her name, address, phone, and email address. It also has the date of any interview, letter or email where family information was exchanged, along with a very brief note of what we discussed. The note doesn’t have to say much–it could be "initial interview - Moses side" or "Charles Kelley family information." It just has to be enough so I can remember a little of what was said. I do it in pencil so if an address changes I can easily erase and write the new one.

I believe that a contact book is valuable because with it I have almost instant access to all of the people with whom I have shared our history. It helps me get and stay organized.

Jim Moses is a genealogy buff living in Lansing. Write to him at the Sentinel-Standard, 114 N. Depot St., Ionia, MI 48846 or email jmosesgen@gmail.com.